UPDATE: Downtown’s Houston Club building could have new owner

If the Houston Club building falls into foreclosure, it will have at least one potential buyer: the Houston Club.

A group of clubmembers met last week to discuss the possibility of buying the downtown building, and “there seems to be legitimate interest,” said Stephen Jacobs, a Houston attorney and Houston Club board member.

It’s still too early to say whether the buyer would be the club itself or simply a group of individual members.

“The club members would be looking at it as a real estate investment like anyone else,” Jacobs said, adding that it would provide a long-term home for the decades-old private dining and fitness club.

The Houston Club’s lease, which expires in 2015, costs the club $1.38 per square foot per year — far below market rents.

“Effectively, the building subsidizes a private club and therefore loses money annually due to this lease, ” Cameron’s Jano Nixon Kelley said last month.

Cameron had been hoping to scale down the club’s 128,000-square-foot lease and possibly relocate it to another part of the building. It wants to find a school or educational facility to take the four floors the club now occupies.

The parties are now awaiting a judgment from a bankruptcy hearing as to whether or not the lender, Wachovia, can foreclose on the owner.

In the meantime, the group of club members will being the process of valuing the building.

The 350,000- square-foot property at 811 Rusk is on the tax rolls at around $8.5 million.

UPDATE: Jano Nixon Kelley of Cameron Management says the total tax value for the property is actually around $14 million. The building has three different accounts for property taxes based on these address: 804 Capitol, 700 Travis and 811 Rusk.